


Of Ill Repute

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Introspection, Isolation, Quadruple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5606452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen has a reputation again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Ill Repute

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 10/11/15 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #235.

The strangest part about moving to New York is that Karen magically becomes respectable again -- not because _she's_ changed (mostly she hasn't, and the few exceptions are years old by now) but because nobody here knows her. And so they take her at face value: a pretty young woman with an associate degree in accounting looking for an office job.

(Sealed records are beautiful things, she thinks. Especially once you're away from the people who already know everything that's supposedly locked up and forgotten.)

She gets a job. That's easy, all things considered.

Then she works on getting a life. That's harder.

It turns out that once she gets to know people more than casually, they want to know her more than casually in return. They want her to open her shields and share what makes her tick.

And Karen... can't. Not without opening a hundred other doors she desperately wants to keep locked. So she has work friends she sometimes gets a drink with on Fridays, some people she cheers with at roller derby matches, and her upstairs neighbor who walks his dog at the same time Karen goes jogging before work and wants someone to nod along to his perennial complaints about the weather and the city council. But no real friends.

She doesn't have a reputation following her like an inky cloud anymore, but regaining her respectability isn't the same as starting over without scars.

She thinks, later, that if she'd had friends, she might not have paid enough attention to her work to spot the fishy transactions. If she'd had friends, she might not have gotten Daniel Fisher killed -- she might have been sure enough to take the data public right away. If she'd had friends, she might not have latched onto Ben so hard and fast and gotten him killed too.

She has a reputation again now, the residue of old disasters trailing behind her like smoke. Nobody wants to hire a whistleblower. Nobody wants to befriend a person so closely associated with so many deaths. Even Matt and Foggy would probably turn away if they knew she really was guilty of murder, or if they found out all the other secrets in her closet.

Karen looks down at her hands, scrubs away phantom blood and oil, and thinks, fine. She's trouble. She always has been. She always will be.

She can work with that.


End file.
